Ahah! So as part of my search for answers I checked the operation of my Nexus 10 with my app. It turns out that the values that the getSupportedFpsRange function returns are ranges representing exact duples that may be input into setPreviewFpsRange and any other duples are unsupported (as far as I can tell, anyway.)
I discovered this because the Nexus 10 returns multiple duples from getSupportedFpsRange. I've duplicated the three devices' getSupportedFpsRange return values here.
Examples of supported range values
LG Nexus 4:
preview-fps-range-values=(5000,120000);
Motorola Atrix:
preview-fps-range-values=(10000,30000);
Samsung Nexus 10:
preview-fps-range-values=(15000,15000),(24000,24000),(25000,25000),(15000,30000),(30000,30000);
Conclusion
We cannot do
params.setPreviewFpsRange( 29000, 29000 );
to force the preview to be at 29fps unless the device already specifically supports that duple.
Of course, the original reason I was investigating this functionality was in the hopes of replicating the Nexus 4's silky smooth camera preview in my own app. This would seem to prove conclusively that, on the Nexus 4 at least, setPreviewFpsRange won't help with that.
Time to continue searching. (: